Majora Carter on Urban Renewal and Environmental Justice

I’m sitting here a spoiled brat compared to this woman. I am smack on the doorstep of the world’s largest urban park whereas this woman fought a hard battle of urban renewal to not just bring the first piece of green space adjoining the river to the polluted, overindustrialized and woefully badly urbanly “planned” South Bronx in sixty years (try and think of living someplace with nothing green for 60 years), but has also led an entire “green the ghetto” movement which has revitalized the area proving that not only is green sustainable, it’s also commercially profitable and good for the inhabitants.

She spoke at the TED conference in Monterrey this week and they’ve put her segment online. Her speech, quite frankly, blew me away.

The woman is amazing, charismatic and solving a genuine, real problem. Most of all, she is one of those rare people that makes us realize that it only takes a few people, maybe even yourself, acting in everyone’s interest to make some big changes that benefits everyone. She’s even a MacArthur Fellow (yes, the ‘genius award’ people) for her contributions.